The Black Abbot
“Tell me, Leslie, did Thomas leave any relations? I should like to
provide for them. The man annoyed me, but I really do not regret
killing him. But I should not like to feel that his relatives were
suffering through my act of justice.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said, and it did not seem to be her voice.
LV
It seemed an interminable time before his light went out. Was he
sleeping? Should she attempt to escape past him? From where she sat
she could see his hand, which lay over the edge of the pit, and she
remembered Dick telling her how light a sleeper he was. Systematically
and without moving, she searched the place with her eyes, foot by
foot. In one corner of the room square tins of every shape were piled.
She supposed they were preserved provisions and she wondered how he
got rid of the débris. She examined the wash place, cupped her hands
and drank of the cool, refreshing water, afterward bathing her face.
The touch of the cold spring water refreshed and invigorated her.
How long she sat there motionless, she could not tell. She was in a
kind of coma, paralyzed by a sense of helplessness. It must have been
hours before she heard him move and, his blanket over his arm, and
rifle in hand, he crept down the steps and fastened the slab.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t speak--it is he!” he whispered, and sat down by her side, his
hand on her shoulder.
She heard the sound of footsteps above.
Dick!
She had to bite her lips to prevent the cry that came to her lips.
Harry was watching her--a scream and she would be dead. Dick could
never break open that trap in time, even if he could locate the sound.
Presently the footsteps went away and she felt the hand on her
shoulder relax.
“Sorry to disturb you.”
He picked up blanket and rifle and ascended the steps--she watched him
pull the paving-stone forward and after a while there was quietness.
There must be some exit, if the legend of the disreputable Black Abbot
were true. She took off her shoes and walked noiselessly over the even
floor, examining it stone by stone. The walls were obviously
impenetrable; the vaulted ceiling was decorated with the lines of a
St. Andrew’s Cross that met in a great stone rosette in the centre.
He had left a box of matches and a candle on the table. This she lit
and carried it into the tiny cavern where the water ran. She could see
no roof; she guessed it stretched up the full height of the tower, and
that somewhere above was the edge of the circular staircase that had
brought her down to the first cavern.
Holding the light above her head, she strained her eyes upward and
presently she saw great iron D-shaped projections fixed at intervals
of a foot; they reached to the top, and, most blessed sight of all,
she saw above her head a star.
And yet she was puzzled. The Abbot had a reputation for gallantry, and
it was hardly likely that the visitors who shared his solitude would
make their entrance by so precarious a means. She reached up, but her
hand was three feet from the nearest rung, and there was nothing in
the room on which she could stand. She went back to her bed
noiselessly and pulled out one of the sheets; she took the remaining
rifle and, by dint of great exertion, managed to push one end of the
sheet through the nearest rung. After ten minutes’ work the end came
down and she had a rope. She knotted together the sheets at the end,
and tested her weight. The staple held, and, springing up, she climbed
hand over hand to the lowest rung. Her arms were almost pulled from
their sockets; she was breathless, but she held on, and, reaching up,
caught the third rung and pulled herself up until her feet rested on
the first. She waited a little while to gain breath and began to
climb. Higher and higher, and then her heart sank. Above her, she saw
a steel grille, fixed immovably across the exit. It was impossible
even to put her arm through, the meshes were so small, and with a
bitter sense of disappointment, she descended again and slid down the
sheet to the floor.
There was no escape this way. She unknotted the sheet and replaced it
in her bed, stained with rust and torn at the edges. She brought the
rifle back with her. She was an enthusiastic miniature target shot and
knew the mechanism of the weapon. Pulling out the magazine, she found
it loaded to its full capacity. Here, then, was something; her
confidence grew, though she prayed she might never have to use this
weapon upon the madman who slept so quietly above. The weapon might be
used to terrify him in an emergency.
She went back to the wash place and looked up. Day was breaking, and
she took a sudden resolve. The man had been almost his normal self, as
she had known, and she guessed that this was but an interlude and that
there were periods when she must shoot to save her life. Stealthily
she crept up the stairs, rifle in hand, and she heard him stir, and
presently his shrill voice asked:
“Where are you going? Stay where you are, you vixen----”
She brought the butt of the rifle and smashed past the paving-stone
that prevented the trap from closing. The stone thudded down, and
instantly she swung round the heavy bar that kept it in place. She
heard him stamping and screaming above; heard, with a shivering
horror, the threats that, as she thought, no human tongue could frame;
staggering down the steps, she fell.
LVI
A high official from Scotland Yard had arrived and was interviewing
Dick in the library.
“I am wholly responsible. I have always known my brother was queer,
and about a year ago I was certain that the horrible taint of madness
which his poor mother transmitted to him was developing in a way which
could only have one end. I begged of him to see a medical man, but he
hated doctors. I brought down the best alienists from London in
various guises, sometimes as bailiffs, and occasionally as prospective
buyers of our property, but in their presence he behaved so rationally
that it was impossible that I could get a certificate.
“My own position was a very delicate one. I am, as you know, the heir
to the property. Any step I took meant that the estate came into my
hands, and that eventually, when poor Harry died, as one doctor told
he must die in a few years, I should be branded with the stigma of
having put him away, and I was anxious to save the family name. My
chief anxiety was that he should never marry.”
“Wasn’t it easy enough to take the girl into your confidence?”
Dick was silent for a while.
“Not in this case. There were reasons why----”
And the official, dimly understanding, changed the subject.
“Then you were the Black Abbot?”
“Mostly,” confessed Dick. “My brother was terrified of the Abbot and
would never go out if there was a rumour that the Black Abbot was
about. I was especially anxious to keep him in the house, where, under
my eye, there was no chance for him to indulge in these extraordinary
paroxysms that have really alarmed the countryside. The man whom the
villagers feared and whom they call the Black Abbot, is really Harry.
I was a very silent Black Abbot,” he smiled faintly, “and I had no
other purpose than to keep Harry indoors. I’m going to say I did not
always succeed.”
“I’m afraid the truth will have to come out now,” said the official,
shaking his head.
“I wish it had come out last week,” replied Dick bitterly.
“Do you think your brother is responsible for the disappearance of
Miss Gwyn?”
“Undoubtedly. He must have attracted her to the window and persuaded
her to come down into the grounds. He was very plausible; no man would
dream that he was not sane, only I, who have seen”--he drew a long
breath--“what I have seen. I’ll tell you this, Colonel,” he said, with
sudden vehemence, “not all the lordship of Chelford, not all the
estates, not even the Chelford treasure, would make me live again my
life of the past five years! There are times,” he said, his voice
trembling with passion, “when I feel I would like to dig up the Abbey
and scatter its stones in the dust, raze this house to the ground, and
turn the place into a public park.” He laughed at his own excess. “I
am talking like an idiot. This place belongs to a family that knows
not Harry. He is just a terrible accident. My dear mother often told
me how worried my father was about Harry, his queer, secretive ways.
And yet in a way he is a sportsman, one of the best shots in England
as a boy, a great runner, and a wonderful fellow over a country, until
about eight years ago, when this treasure bug got into his brain and
he shut himself away from us all and gave his mind and his soul to
this wild chase.”
“The gold?”
Dick shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If it were only the gold, that would have been an
intelligent interest in life.”
He described Harry’s search for the elixir, the famous Life Water of
which the ancient Chelford had written in his diary.
“It is probably no more than a flask of a native wine--Arac or the
like,” said Dick. “Poor Harry!”
Miss Wenner had intended to leave by the early morning train but had
changed her mind. Possibly the arrival of Fabrian Gilder had been a
factor. She had one solution for Leslie’s disappearance.
“Have you searched the Abbey?” she asked, not once but a dozen times.
Dick was weary; the Abbey had been his first thought. He had suspected
this was Harry’s hiding place, and with his own hands had taken a
basket of provisions for him, but this, he saw, was untouched.
There was one possibility about the underground cavern, and that was
the second door, and he had ordered the blacksmith and his assistant
to be at the stone tower at two o’clock that afternoon, with
instruments, one of which had to be procured from London.
The presence of Miss Wenner was not as distasteful to Gilder as he
thought it would have been. To use a phrase of childhood, she was “on
his side.” In very truth, Miss Wenner was on anybody’s side if that
person happened to be agreeable to her.
They were walking through the rosary before lunch, and certainly the
trend of Mary Wenner’s remarks was very comforting to a man who had
been so badly rebuffed.
“If I had my way, Fabrian, dear”--she assumed all the rights and
privileges of an engagement which was somewhat illusory and he made
only a feeble resistance--“if I had my way I’d put you in charge of
this case. After all, you are the very man to solve this mystery and I
must say you could have knocked me down with a feather when you told
me you were fifty--you don’t look a day more than thirty--and you’ve
got experience, you’re a lawyer, you’re up to all kinds of
artfulness----”
“Not to all kinds,” said Gilder with a grim recollection of a certain
blank check.
“Well, to most kinds,” conceded Miss Wenner. “And what are they all
doing? This Dick Alford and this so-called detective? They’re just
standing around, scratching their heads, whilst you could go, as it
were, to the real heart of the mystery. Don’t deny it--I’m sure you
would, Fabe.”
“Don’t call me Fabe, Mary,” he asked gently. “If you want to call me
by my Christian name, let us have all the three syllables.”
“You’re a man of the world, Fabrian”--she accentuated the word as she
would have done “Mary Ann”--“you understand the ins and outs of
everything. Why don’t they come to you like men and say, ‘Mr. Gilder,
what is your opinion of this mystery?’ Instead of which, they don’t so
much as ask you if you’ve got a mouth!”
“Perhaps they know that,” said Gilder in good humour.
He lifted his head suddenly, a frown on his face. He had heard a shot;
more than a shot, the whirr and whine of a bullet.
“What----”
Something fell at his feet with a “plop!” He saw a little hole, and,
stooping, dug out a bullet with his fingers.